Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
